Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Ghouls . . . these and many other Creatures of the Night are featured in this bumper collection of stories by such authors as Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Tanith Lee, Michael Marshall Smith, Kim Newman, Joe R. Lansdale, Lisa Tuttle, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Basil Copper and many others. Here you’ll discover creatures both unnatural and man made, as the walking dead rise from their graves, immortal bloodsuckers seek human nourishment, deformed monstrosities pursue their victims across the countryside, and the ugliest of nightmares is revealed to have a soul. Drawn from the pages of legend and literature, these stories feature Things that slither, stagger, swoop, stomp and scamper. So bolt the doors, lock the windows and shiver in the shadows, because no-one is safe when the Monsters are loose .

Stephen Gallagher – The Horn: Three strangers, Mick, Dave and the narrator, are marooned inside a hut during a snow blizzard. The cabin is base to the clean-up team who attend the grim business of scraping up accident casualties and one wall is plastered with newspaper accounts of this stretch of motorway’s greatest hits.

“Entire families wiped out. A teenage girl decapitated. Lorry drivers crushed when their cabs folded around them like stepped-upon Coke cans ….. an unwanted mistress dumped, Jimmy Hoffa-style, into the wire skeleton of a bridge piling that had been boxed-up ready to take concrete the next morning. ENTOMBED ALIVE! the headline said, but even that looked kind of pale next to the disaster involving the old folks’ outing and the pet food truck full of offal.

When their gas cylinder – the only source of heat – conks out, the men have an unpleasant decision to make. Stay here and probably freeze to death, or head out into the snowstorm, make for the huge articulated rig about half a mile on and sit it out in the warm cabin. Mick volunteers to go on ahead and give them a blast on the horn once he’s got the heater going.

But a murderous something else has beaten him to it ….

Michael Marshall Smith – The Man Who Drew Cats: One day old Tom just blew into Kingstown, stepped into The Hogshead Bar and the locals – unusually for them – took to the quiet fellow straight away. A quiet and private man, he makes his living from the extraordinary paintings he tosses off for tourists and sometimes when the mood takes him, he chalks his more complex designs on the pavement. But when he befriends little Billy and his mom and learns that her nogoodnik, drunken husband regularly beats the shit out of them both, he draws something really terrifying.

Chet Williamson – …To Feel Another’s Woe: The beautiful Sheila Remarque is a stage actress of exceptional ability but her gift is not for acting: she vamps the emotions of all those who come in close contact with her, draining them until they are little more than zombies.

Robert McCammon – Pin: The psychotic Joey Shatterly stands before the mirror diving the pin through each of his pupils in turn prior to stepping out with his rifle and seven bullets …

Nicholas Royle – Archway: From the day she moves into her North London flat, Bella is haunted by the scornful laughter of an old, grey faced tramp she’s see on the street. She is unfairly dismissed from her job, encounters the red-tape horrors of the DSS and faces eviction. Finally …

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Several of these stories, along with selections from vols. 2 and 3, were resurrected in The Giant Book Of Best New Horror (Magpie, 1993, 1994)